Spyware Blocker 101

By Dave Owen

I had a very enlightening experience this past weekend.  I
gained firsthand knowledge about which spyware checkers are
better.

As the result of a number of errors, my son and daughter-in-
law's computer died.  For a couple of weeks, it had been
getting slower and slower. 

I suggested running the normal solutions, defrag the hard
drive, add new memory, run the spyware checkers.  They did
these but it got slower, until about a week ago, it finally
crashed.

Long story short, they bought a new computer and asked me
to work on the configuration for them.  I took the hard
drive from the old machine and added it to the new machine.
It was then time to begin removing programs and files that
they did not need.  I began deleting some old directories
and was notified by Norton that some of them were Trojans.

This concerned me enough that I decided to clean the new
machine.

I downloaded and ran the free version NoAdware which identified and removed 5 programs.

Since this did not seem like enough to have caused the
original problems and slow down, I then used Spyware S&D
which found and deleted 14 more problem files.

Since this was really beginning to get flaky I then used
the free version of AdAware which chugged a while and found and deleted 127 more files and programs.

The next morning, my son-in-law mentioned that he used a
'spy guard' program at his office.  So I got on Google and
began researching spy guard programs.

I found the Adware Report site and looked over the reviews.

Seeing that the Aluria Spyware Eliminator was the top rated,
I decided to run their scan.  Another 97 culprits were
discovered and removed from that poor machine.

If you have not been keeping count, that  totals 243
programs and/or files that I removed.  This is a really bad
thing, but I think the worst part of it is that it took 4
different programs to clean up the machine!

When we got back home, I ordered and installed the Aluria
product on our two computers.  This has a nice scheduling
tool so I set them both to run early in the morning which
they promptly did.  That afternoon, I decided to run Aluria
to check the results.  It ran and did not find any problems.

Yay!!

But wait!!  Just to double check, I ran AdAware on both
machines again  which discovered 27 intruders on my wife's
machine and 4 on mine.

Bottom line,  so far I haven't been able to find any 'end-
all' spyware cleaning programs.  To keep your machine
clean, you will have to develop a routine to run at least two
programs that complement each other.

The ones that I have chosen are Aluria Spyware and AdAware.
 Aluria is scheduled to run each evening and I run AdAware
once a week.

The main thing that I want to get across is that it takes
more than one simple step to protect your machine and
information.

To make your machine as safe as possible, you need a few
good products: firewall, anti-virus program, anti-scam
product and a spyware cleaner.

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Dave Owen, webmaster of www.Scam-Information.com , provides the information you need for a safe trip around the
internet. For more information visit www.scam-information.
com/phishingnews.html or send a note to: scaminfo@scam -
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